


the memory i can't erase

by Nadin



Category: Wonder Woman (2017), Wonder Woman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sharing a Bed, Steve Trevor Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-23 00:51:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15594606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadin/pseuds/Nadin
Summary: WonderTrev Love Week 2018Day 3 - tropes and clichesUnwilling to accept their breakup, Etta sends Steve and Diana on a mission together. Little do they know...





	the memory i can't erase

**Author's Note:**

> So happy they have two prompts for each day to choose from. I rarely write AUs and given a chance to dive into tropes - hell, yeah, I'm taking it! Also it's been a while since I wrote an awkward bed sharing.

Steve tries to remember what happened between them, what went so wrong that they were left with no words to say to one another. He remembers the days of pure bliss, right after the war has ended, when they would talk for hours on end and never run out of words, when they craved each other’s closeness like it was air that they needed to breathe. Like they could fall to pieces without one another.

He also remembers long silences filled with words that they knew they would never speak and averted gazes and needing space from one another when only recently the very thought of it was unbearable. When being in the same room started to feel suffocating.

He does not remember crossing the line that divided them, separating _then_ from _now_. He doesn’t but he wants to, if only because he needs to understand. It never comes, and his nights stretch long and lonely before him, his days filled with everything he can think of to keep his mind off Diana.

She is still here, though. Still in London even though he knows that there is nothing keeping her from leaving. He is not sure where she might want to go, but the world outside of the island is big and new, lying at her feet. She might like Paris, he thinks, and shakes the thought off. He was thinking of taking her there before… before everything went wrong. Before heaviness fell between them and pushed them away from one another.

He is a hero now. Sort of. Everyone who has made it out of Belgium a year ago is. They don’t know that he stopped that plane. They don’t know that he jumped out of it before the gas exploded. Don’t know the things he doesn’t want to share. They love him anyway because they can breathe freely.

This is why he has a medal now, even though he would have given it and everything else in his life to have Diana back with him. This is why they call him for help when things get bad and they need someone who will get the job done. He is a good spy, for what it’s worth. A good soldier.

This is why Steve is not surprised when he gets a call from Etta early on a Saturday morning, saying that there is a mission.

“I’m sorry to bother you so early, and on a weekend, too--” Etta starts apologetically.

“S’alright,” Steve mutters before she has launched into a lengthy apology that can go on for a while.

He rubs his tired eyes and doesn’t tell her that his sleep is a joke. Between the nightmares that have become his constant companions the moment his life stopped being focused on survival and Diana’s absence, he is lucky to get a few hours of fitful rest. Etta is worried, he can see it in her eyes when they meet, can hear it in the tentative, carefully chosen words. She doesn’t know how to ask but she is aware that something is wrong. Otherwise Diana would have never asked her to help her find another accommodation, one that she didn’t have to share with Steve.

“What is it?” He asks.

The war is over but the aftermath of it is brutal. Sometimes it feels like the whole world is scarred so deep it doesn’t know how to even start to heal. Steve listens to Etta and says yes before she’s even finished. If he can help, he will. He does it out of the goodness of his heart but also because he knows that he needs to keep his mind occupied. These days, it’s the only thing that stops him from going crazy. They say goodbye and hang up. Somehow, he managed not to ask her about Diana even though he really wanted to.

He should have.

Because this this is how he ends up standing face to face with Diana on a chilly afternoon, at a loss for words, the pause stretching between them for so long that it would have been uncomfortable if he actually cared.

She is wearing plain clothes and he wonders if she has her armour underneath them or if she is carrying it in a sack behind her back. He doesn’t ask though because it is not his place anymore. Her hair is tied in a bun at the nape of her neck, a few wisps fluttering around her cheeks in a faint breeze and he has to resist the urge to tuck them behind her ear.

Steve stars. And then stares some more. It is so odd to know someone in the most intimate way and then see them turn into a complete stranger. His eyes drop to her mouth but he reminds himself to stay focused.

It’s a losing battle and he knows it.

“Etta called….” Diana is the first one to speak. She trails off.

He nods. And then nods again.

He wants to laugh. Of course, she did. He should have known. He couldn’t have but he should have.

Etta never prodded him for any details, and Steve knows that she most likely wouldn’t dare to pester Diana but she knows things, of course, she does, and this seems like too much of a coincidence. He wants to kill his secretary.

He doesn’t say it out loud.

They study each other some more, allowing the crowds milling around to part around them. He hates how composed Diana looks when his heart is pounding so hard that she can probably hear it, how calm she appears to be when he can’t form a coherent thought. Does she really care so little? Has she moved on already? Steve is not sure he wants an answer to either. He swallows and wills himself to stop thinking of unravelling her hair from that knot so he could bury his fingers in the black curls.

They are here for a reason, and the sooner they get it out of the way, the sooner he will be able to go back to his empty apartment that offers reclusion but no solace. Right now, it doesn’t seem like a bad deal at all.

Except it’s not that simple.

Steve can think of a great many ways in which a military mission can go wrong, especially now that everyone is jumpy and suspicious. It’s only been a year, and this soon after the war, they keep waiting for it to start again. He plays those scenarios out in his mind, thinking of possible solutions and alternative courses of action should the need for them arise. He is good at strategic planning and it is a good way to keep his mind busy.

Surprisingly, it goes without a hitch. Which, come to think of it, shouldn’t have caught him off guard – he and Diana have always been good partners.

He doesn’t think that the one thing to actually hinder the smooth progression of their plans would be a double sized bed in a room they find in a small inn – their only alternative, as it has turned out, to sleeping outside in the field.

Steve pauses in the doorway and stares at it for a long moment, a piece of furniture taking nearly the entire space of the room. For a second, he wonders how they even got it here, up the three flights of narrow stairs and through a small door. It almost feels like the powers-that-be have somehow conspired to turn his day upside down.

“Um….” He starts, his mind blank.

Diana steps around him and walks into the room. Sometime during the course of their day, she has removed the pin that’s been holding her hair in place and now it is spilling over her shoulders, catching the flickering light of the fire in the grate. A memory flashes across Steve’s mind, a similar room in a similar inn a year ago, and his mouth on hers and then everywhere else on her body.

He pushes the mental image away.

She sets her bag down on one of the chairs and turns to him.

Steve wants to cross the room and kiss her, the need aching in the center of his chest.

“We should ask for a different room,” he says instead and even steps back to go downstairs and somehow, maybe, possibly find a way to deal with this.

“She said it was the last one,” Diana reminds him, and the words of the inn-keeper pop up in his mind. She has indeed. “That we got lucky.”

Steve doesn’t comment on that last part.

“Well, maybe I could--” he starts and stops abruptly. _Maybe I could ask her for a spare mattress or some blankets_ , he finishes in his mind and grimaces.  

Married couples. The place only allows married couples to share a room. If he goes downstairs and asks the lovely lady for the blankets so he could make himself a bed on the flood under the window, she will be within her right to kick them both out.

He takes a deep breath and steps inside, closing the door behind him and trying to ignore the fact that with the two of them there, the room seems to have shrunk before his eyes. There is a window overlooking a quiet street and a fire grate with two worn armchairs sitting on either side of it. A table by the wall. And seemingly no air. He can feel the old tension like static around them.

Steve clears his throat.

“You should take the bed,” he says after a moment. 

Diana turns to him, her brows pulling together. She glances around the room.

“And where would you sleep?”

He gestures vaguely at the chairs. “I’ll figure something out.”

After sleeping on the cold ground and in less than ideal conditions during the war, he is certain that he can fall asleep anywhere. Even the floor doesn’t look that bad. The room is warm, he can grab a pillow from the bed and use his coat as a makeshift mattress. Come to think of it, it’s not a bad deal at all.

Diana follows his gaze and shakes her head. “I could take the floor--”

“No,” he interjects immediately.

This is not an option.

She raises an eyebrow. “Why? If you can sleep on the floor why can’t I?” There is a challenge in her voice and he walks right into the trap.

Steve is very much aware that she takes the equality of men and woman very seriously. She followed Etta to the suffrage marches without hesitation or a moment of doubt. And he loves her for it. Loves her more that he could ever imagine loving anyone.

“Because it’s not done,” he says, rubbing his forehead. It sounds lame but it’s all he got.  

“Because I’m a woman?” She presses.

 _Because my mother will roll in her grave if I even consider it_ , Steve thinks. He knows it is a ridiculous thing to say, just like pointing out that he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if ever allowed it.

What were they talking about, again?   

“Because it’s not done,” he repeats and hopes that it will be the end of it.

“I don’t see why we can’t sleep together,” Diana frowns. She eyes the bed critically, as if waiting for it to turn into something that it is not. “We have done it before.”

Steve’s windpipe closes. He tugs at the collar of his shirt, hoping that she will think it’s the warmth from the fire that turns his face red. Great. Now all he can think of is sleeping with her. Which inevitably leads to thinking of _sleeping_ with her, when no real sleep was had.

He turns toward the deep darkness outside the window. Takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, hoping it will clear his head.

It doesn’t.  

“Because we are not…” he starts and falters.

“Together?” She finishes, her head cocked to her shoulder.

Her voice is soft but he refuses to read anything into it.

He feels the heat rise inside of him. He rubs the back of his neck. “Uh, yes.”

She looks like she is still trying to figure something out. “What does it matter?” She asks at last. “We’ve had a long day, you deserve rest as much as I do.” A faint smile tugs at the corner of her mouth. “Even an above average man needs to sleep.”

She might have as well sucker punched him. All air wheezes out of him. Arguing he can take. Not talking, cold silence, brisk answers – he’s been ready for them. The old joke that she’s never stopped teasing him about? He doesn’t know how to do that.

“It’s not about—it’s not about that,” Steve starts but trails off once more. “It’s just….”

He thinks back to the conversation on the boat all those months ago. He knows that she is very much aware that marriage is not something that is necessarily essential for sharing a bed, and he is not sure how to explain to her that his problem is not disliking this idea but perhaps liking it a bit too much than he is allowed to. But the truth is, he missed her. Every day, every moment. And her proximity is downright excruciating right now.

Diana is looking at him, waiting. She is hard to argue with when the logic of his world fails.

Steve shrugs and looks away, pretending to study a painting on the wall. “If you don’t mind I don’t mind.”

He wonders if he’d sleep better in the field.

There is a tiny bathroom down the hall. Steve washes the grime of the day off of himself and stares in a mirror for a long moment, not quite recognizing the man looking back at him. He has made so many mistakes in his life, but this is one he will never forgive himself for.

He thinks for another moment and realizes that apart from his time on the boat with Diana on the night they left Themyscira, he has never shared a sleeping space with a woman that he wasn’t romantically involved with. He is not sure what to make of it, and to distract himself from that particular line of thinking, he wanders downstairs to see if he can get some food for them.

Sarah, the lady running the place who reminds him of Etta (if Etta was 20 years older and not involved with the Government), is happy to oblige.

“That’s a lovely wife you have, Mr. Trevor,” she chirps as she fixes them a giant plate of food that looks more like a tray.

Steve chokes and coughs, choosing to stick to thanking her profusely to avoid commenting on her words. He is suddenly not hungry anymore.

Upstairs, Diana is brushing her hair in front of a small mirror mounted on one of the walls. Steve tries to look anywhere but at her thin cotton nightgown beneath one of the housecoats provided by the inn-keeper. Judging by her flushed cheeks and a faint smell of soap in the air, he’s been gone long enough for her to take advantage of the bath as well.

They eat in silence and afterwards, Steve debates taking the plate down and thanking Sarah once again, but he is not certain he can handle any more talk about his ‘nice wife tonight. He reminds himself to kill Etta again, more determined this time.

In the end, he rules it out. Another trip downstairs, that is. They can do it in the morning. Surely it’s not a big deal. Which leaves them, essentially, with nothing else to do but go to bed.

The pause stretches between them uncomfortably long.

“Well, I guess we should…” Steve starts when it gets unbearable.

He clears his throat. There’s not much else left to stay.

Diana nods, a paragon of efficiency that makes him feel awkward and clumsy. The housecoat slides off her shoulders and she catches it before it falls to the floor, draping it over the armrest of the chair. Steve stares at her back, at the tight coils of her hair brushing against the cotton of her nightgown. He averts his eyes quickly and turns around before he is caught, his cheeks burning.

Then again, if she doesn’t care why should he?

He strips down to his undershirt and drawers. He briefly considers leaving his pants on, but the idea is ludicrous. She has seen him naked, multiple times. Come to think of it, he doesn’t remember Diana bothering with an actual nightgown too often, either. In the privacy of his apartment, there was no need for it. The mental image makes his blood rush down and he takes a steadying breath as he folds his pants and drapes them over the back of the second chair, his shirt slung over them.

When Steve turns around, she has already slipped under the covers. He turns off the light and prods across the room. The bed is not hard to find in the faint light of the dying fire in the grate. He climbs under the blankets and sighs when his head touches the pillow, his body welcoming stillness and comfort. He hasn't noticed how tired he has been until now.

The bed is big enough for them to be comfortable on their respective ends, at least a foot of pace between them. It feels impossibly small. With Diana so close under the same blanket, he can feel the heat of her body. He should have asked for a second blanket anyway.  

There is no way he can sleep like this.

He folds his hands on top of the covers and stares at the ceiling. It is painfully quiet, save for the quiet ticking of an old clock and the barely audibly crackling of the embers. His mind feels like it’s on fire.

Beside him, Diana sirs, settling more comfortably now that their allotted space has been established. Steve listens to her breathe but doesn’t dare turn. His mind drifts once more to the night on the boat when they were leaving the island, the small space and accidental touches that both didn’t bother trying to avoid, aware of the fatuity of it. For the reason he can’t define, sharing a bed with her feels a lot more awkward now that there is history between them than when she was just a stranger.

“Sorry,” she breathes when her foot brushes against his.

“It’s okay,” he stutters, his heart fluttering somewhere in his throat.

He vows to never speak with Etta again.

Diana is quiet but she is not asleep, the pattern of her breathing isn’t quite right.

Steve follows a thin crack in the paint running across the ceiling with his eyes. He swallows.

“Did you know?” He asks softly after a few moments, a question that has been burning in the back of his mind all afternoon.

Diana shifts and out of the corner of his eyes he sees her roll onto her back. She turns her face to him.

“Know what?” She whispers.

“That I—that we—” he stops. “Did Etta tell you that I’d be there?” It’s like he has forgotten how the words were supposed to work.

“No,” she says quietly.

“Would you have come if you knew?”

The question slips out before Steve knows to stop it. He winces a little.

“Yes,” Diana responds. He turns to her and now they are looking at each other in near complete darkness. He can’t see her properly, can’t read her expression, and he is not sure whether it’s a good thing or not. He hates the distance between them. “Would _you_?”

He searches for words.

The pause grows long. She turns away and rolls onto her side, her back to him, before he finds any.

“Goodnight, Steve.”

“Goodnight,” he breathes.

Steve doesn’t think that sleep is an option. He feels too wired and Diana is too close and he has so many words rolling on his tongue – how has she been? What has she been up to? Is she alright? He swallows them all and closes his eyes, bracing himself for long hours of tossing and turning and thinking the same things he has been thinking for months.

Before he knows, he is asleep.

\---

Steve awakes suddenly and with a jolt, his heart beating so fast that he can barely breathe and an invisible hand is closed over his throat, panic rising inside of him. For a long moment, he is lost and disoriented. This is not his home, not his bed, and the thought is suddenly terrifying. He eyes fly open and he peers into the thick darkness around him—

No, no the darkness.

It takes him a moment to chases the remnants of the dream away and focus properly. His breathing is ragged and laboured, his hands curled into fists around the sheets. Lying on her side facing him is Diana, her eyes roaming over his features in concern as she strokes his cheek, trying to soothe him.

“Steve,” she murmurs when his eyes find hers.

There is almost no space between them. He feels her relax a little.

“It’s alright,” she says softly, smoothing down his hair, her hand warm against his face. She trails her fingers down his cheek once more. “It’s over.”

A dream, he thinks absently. He’s been dreaming again. He’s awaken her like he used to before. There is always a scream lodged in his throat, his body shaking and covered in sweat. He doesn’t know how to make the demons that took residence in his head go away.

He licks his chapped lips and leans into her touch, too tired to stop himself. He needs this, her.

“Angel,” he utters.

“Shh.” Diana leans forward and presses a kiss to his forehead, her hand still curled over his jaw, her thumb stroking his prickly stubble. “Sleep.”

The fog rises in his head, the comfort of her presence almost too much to bear. He knows that he needs to move away, needs to thank her for her kindness and put that foot of distance between them again. Knows what the right thing to do it.

He doesn’t care. He has spent the past eight months missing her so badly that he can feel it in his bones, like the weight that he has to carry on his shoulders. With Diana’s hand on is cheek and their foreheads resting together, his eyes drop shut and he sleeps.

\---

The morning comes too soon, as they all do. The light streaming through the small window pulls Steve out of his slumber. He fights it as best he can, warm and comfortable and more rested than he has been in months. He doesn’t want to let go of the feeling.

Two things occur to him then.

His memory of the nightmare is blurry and unfocused, but he does remember falling asleep on his side of the bed, sort of, the smell of fresh sheets invading his senses. Right now, his whole body is curled around Diana’s, her shoulder blades pressing into his chest and his face buried into a mass of her hair. He flexes his arm and tightens his grip on her. She scoots back into him without waking.

The feeling is so familiar that it feels like the most natural thing in the world.

Steve lets out a long sigh and nuzzles into her hair, an old habit he can’t resist, breathing her in. And then his eyes snap open when he registers something else. He is comfortable and cozy alright, maybe even a bit _too_ comfortable, all things considered. There is a beautiful woman nestled into the curve of his body and he is not exactly thinking with his head right now—

He lets go of her instantly, mortified, and jolts away, willing himself to—well, to think about something else. Anything. _Fuck_.

He flops on his back and runs a hand over his face, hoping against all hope that she hasn’t noticed, that she hasn’t…

Diana shifts and rolls over to face him, disturbed by the sudden lack of contact, and Steve has to resist the urge to move even further away from her, not wanting her to take it the wrong way. Not wanting to topple to the floor, for that matter. Then again, maybe he should just do it, use it as a distraction.

She stifles a yawn and rubs her eyes and then studies him in the morning light.  

He doesn’t look away, half-certain that he is still dreaming.

“Steve…” Her voice is low and thick with sleep, stirring a memory inside of him, of mornings much like this one but with far less pain hanging between them.

It must be just past dawn, Steve thinks absently, the world outside still grey and slightly out of focus.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “About earlier, about--”

She is shaking her head. “Don’t. Don’t say it, you have nothing to apologize for.” She trails off. Another moment passes. “What happened to us?”

His chest tightens momentarily. He breathes out slowly through his nose.

“You left,” he reminds her. It’s not an accusation, just a fact.

Diana tucks her arm under her cheek. “You asked me to.”

A frown creases his forehead, and he tries to rewind his memory back to the day when she walked out of his life, but his mind comes up empty.

“I did not—I would never… I would never have asked you to leave, Diana.”

“You told me you needed time.”

He remembers that. The war… it didn’t leave anyone unchanged. He needed to figure out a way to get in grips with this new reality, the new person he’d become. That was when the nightmares started too, black void pulling him in and refusing to let him go. It felt like drowning in quicksand and there was nothing he could so to make it stop, make it go away. Nothing to do but wait.

And when Diana asked him what was wrong, he didn’t know how to let her in. She hadn’t been there from the start. Hadn’t seen the things that he had. There were parts of his life and the things he’d gone through and the things he’d done that he needed to learn to live with.

He needed time to figure out how to keep on going with all that. It had never, not even for one moment occurred to him that she might take his words like that. There was more to it, of course. They started to argue, often, not knowing how else to deal with what was happening between them. Now he can barely remember what it was about, but this was that it all boiled down to, apparently. A misunderstanding that left them both lonely

Steve feels like an idiot.

He sits up and leans against the headboard, the intimacy of lying next to her is suddenly too much. He is tempted to leap out of the bed altogether. He doesn’t though and opts for looking at his hands folded in his lap instead.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he starts, pinching the bridge of his nose. He run his fingers through his hair. “I just needed… after the war, it was hard…”

Diana pulls from under the covers and sits next to him, her shoulder only a few inches away.

“Then why didn’t you stop me?” She asks quietly.

A sad smile forms on his lips. He doubts that there is anything that can stop Diana, not when she has set her mind on something. If there is, he hasn’t seen it yet. He never tried because he didn’t think she’d let him.

Steve turns to her. “I thought it was what you wanted,” he murmurs.

They look at one another for a long moment. He takes note of the light laced through her hair, of how he could barely drag his gaze away from hers. There is a softness to her that only early mornings bring, her face open. His heart constricts again.

Diana reaches for him first, her fingertips skitter down his cheek. It’s gentle and tentative and he closes his eyes, savouring it. There has been so much loss in his life he can’t bear the thought of losing her too. Can’t imaging the rest of his days without her.

“How could I ever not want that?” He whispers more to himself than to her. “How could I ever want you gone?”

He opens his eyes. She is impossibly close, her nose almost touching his, and his heart is about to leap out of his chest when his hand curls around hers and he brings it to his mouth and kisses her fingertips. It’s early still and his mind is foggy and mellow and half the time he can’t help but think that he must still be asleep. He covers her hand with his and holds her palm against his cheek.

“I would have done it,” Steve says after a moment.

Her brows knit together. The same adorable confusion he has been witnessing for as long as they knew each other.  

“Would have done what?” Diana asks, puzzled.

“If Etta told me you’d be there, I’d still come.” He waits but she doesn’t say anything, although her features soften enough to make the pit of his stomach grow warm. “I’m sorry.” Steve’s voice is suddenly hoarse, words tumbling out of his mouth because he is scared that she might pull away and he can’t bear the thought of it. “For everything… for hurting you, for not stopping you. For allowing us to lose what we had.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she murmurs but doesn’t add anything else.

Steve chooses not to wonder. In those last few days before she left, they said the words that should never have been said. She called him selfish. He called her entitled. She said she wished they had never met and Steve agreed. It was like they found the spots that hurt the most and kept pressing on them until they were bruised all over.

He doesn’t want to remember any of that.

“Do you think it’s too late?” He asks. “For us… to fix it all?”

“What do _you_ think, Steve?” She asks, her thumb stroking the ridge of his cheekbone.

It takes him a moment to put the answer together, and then he sees how simple it is, how obvious, he almost wants to laugh. He would have, under different circumstances.

“I love you,” he says. “And I want you to come home.”

And then she bridges the distance between them, her lips finding his. There is nothing unsure in her touch, no hesitation, and he feels something snap inside of him. A dam breaking down. 

“I love you,” Steve murmurs against her mouth. “My angel…”

_I love you._

The words throb in his veins, pouring out of his mouth again and again and again, tattooed into her skin.

He tugs her closer until she is in his lap, her palms sliding over his shoulders and the heat of her body spreads into him. Steve buries his hands in her hair, fingers tunnelling through thick mass that felt like silk against his skin. She feels the same, tastes the same, exactly as he remembers and he drinks her up, starved for the one thing that has always mattered to him the most.

Steve kisses her until he is dazed and dizzy. Diana is the one who breaks away and pulls back for a breath. She rests her forehead to his, her cheeks flushed, and he is stupidly pleased to know that he’s done it to her.  

“I missed you,” she whispers, her chest heaving against his and her fingers running along the collar of his undershirt. “I missed you so much.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve repeats, the ache in the center of his chest that has started to ebb flares up and it takes him a moment to push it back.

She lifts his face to hers, her gaze searching his features. “I love you,” she tells him, her tone certain and firm, and this time a smile breaks across Steve’s face.  

“Remind me to thank Etta,” he chuckles, tracing his thumb over her chin.

Diana laughs and kisses him again. When he tugs at the strings at the collar of her nightgown that keep it in a place she doesn’t stop him.

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, I'm such a sucker for angsty bed sharing. Hope you guys are having fun!


End file.
